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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Sunday, June 29, 2003

FERD LEWIS
Since 1979, UH and WAC have been good for each other

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist

"Joining the WAC, in my opinion, is perhaps the most important happening in the athletic history of the University of Hawai'i."
— Ray Nagel, UH athletic director, May 27, 1979.



Amid all the talk about future conference affiliations for the University of Hawai'i, and spirited debate over where the school should be, a milestone anniversary threatens to pass almost unnoticed this week.

And that's too bad, because Tuesday UH will begin its 25th year as a member of the Western Athletic Conference, the only conference home several of its marquee sports have ever had.

In that time, WAC membership has been, as former UH athletic director Ray Nagel and others had hoped and envisioned, a significant turning point in the maturation and success of UH athletics that should be both celebrated and reflected upon, not overlooked.

How many more anniversaries the Rainbows/Rainbow Wahine/Rainbow Warriors/Warriors will observe as part of the nation's most widespread conference is anybody's guess, especially now. And while nobody would predict a golden anniversary in the future, there is also no denying that, to this point, the marriage has been a good one for UH.

Had it not been for the bold foresight of the late Gov. John A. Burns, who decided the WAC was the place to be, and then rolled up his sleeves to make it happen, UH might have long ago vanished from the Division I-A landscape.

Indeed, WAC membership was a lifeline to the school 2,500 miles from its closest competition. When the conference welcomed it aboard on July 1, 1979, UH had been precariously hanging on as an independent and couldn't have endured many more years playing a catch-as-catch-can schedule.

Back then, UH was coming off a messy internecine squabble and NCAA probation in basketball, while mired in an uncertain financial future. While UH paid a price for the first 15 years — subsidizing travel expenses for conference members was a requirement for membership — WAC membership also gave it a home, financial and scheduling stability, visibility and legitimacy.

Curiously, it was the first wave of WAC defections, those by Arizona and Arizona State in 1978, that gave UH the opportunity to find the kind of home it had sought for 15 years and twice been denied.

Meanwhile, the addition of UH also gave the WAC more than just some new blood and an appealing outpost. It also provided new challenges and rivalries to help invigorate the league. "The WAC has been good for Hawai'i and Hawai'i has been good for the WAC," says commissioner Karl Benson.

The WAC that UH enjoys seniority in now — it has the second longest tenure among current membership behind Texas-El Paso — is not the conference Hawai'i joined going on a quarter-century ago. Rather, it is, as UH President Evan Dobelle likes to put it, "the WAC we were left with" after the eight-school breakaway of 1998.

That has UH seeking options and, for one of the few times in the nearly quarter-century, perhaps shopping for a new home. When decision time comes, UH needs to follow the best course for its future and make a sound financial decision just as it did when it originally signed on with the WAC.

In the interim, however, UH should celebrate what WAC membership has meant for the school and focus on doing what it can to help make the conference the best home that it can be.

To do otherwise would be to turn its back on 25 years of history.

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